FGNZ leaves Mortgage Alliance

Financial Group New Zealand (FGNZ) has severed its ties with umbrella organisation The Mortgage Alliance.

Tuesday, November 4th 2003, 9:28PM

by Jenny Ruth

FGNZ confirmed the parting but principal Marjorie Mitchell declined to comment.

The four remaining members of The Mortgage Alliance, which was formed in mid-2002, are Mortgage Link, Property Pack, Mortgage People and Hughsons.

Roger Poulter, who represents Mortgage Link at The Mortgage Alliance, says the split reflects the fact that FGNZ is run differently from the other four members.

FGNZ is an aggregator, akin to AMBL, whose members operate under their own brands and who range from insurance agents who write the occasional mortgage through to fully dedicated mortgage brokers.

The other four alliance members all run branded operations and all their people are dedicated mortgage brokers.

"The strategy for The Mortgage Alliance is that we want totally dedicated mortgage broking companies as members and we want to ensure that those involved are 100% mortgage people. We don’t want to be involved with the aggregation business," Poulter says.

"We mutually decided, Marjorie and us, that it would be best if she continued doing her thing and that we continued down the track as we are."

The Mortgage Alliance wasn’t formed simply with the idea of maximising the commissions banks pay, which is the main reason aggregate groups have been formed. "We’ve suggested to banks that, in some areas, they’re paying too much commission," Poulter says.

Instead, The Mortgage Alliance aims to access the best products for its member companies and to provide economies of scale in areas such as technology, training and commission processing.

Note: Roger Poulter is not advocating a general decrease in broker commissions. In fact, in some areas, he believes there is a case for an increase in commissions. “We need to look at it product by product”.

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